The psychologist’s gaze drifted out to sea again. “I saw you, you know, coming down the trail toward the lighthouse. That’s how I knew for sure you had changed.” “What did you see?” I asked, to humor her. A cough, accompanied by red spittle. “You were a flame,” she said, and I had a brief vision of my brightness, made manifest. “You were a flame, scorching my gaze. A flame drifting across the salt flats, through the ruined village. A slow-burning flame, a will-o’-the-wisp, floating across the marsh and the dunes, floating and floating, like nothing human but something free and floating…”
